Combining global and local ontology handling in a multiagent system

Ontologic knowledge is getting more and more important in agent-based systems, and its handling is becoming crucial for successful applications. But placing all the ontology-handling capabilities in each of the system's agents could make them too heavy. We propose a combination of local and global ontology handling, where part of the ontology is handled locally, using a "client component", and the rest of the ontological knowledge is handled by an "ontology agent", which is accessed by the other agents in the system through their client component. We propose specific methods for representing, storing, querying and translating ontologies for effective use in the context of the "JITIK" system, which is a multiagent system for knowledge and information distribution. We report a working prototype implementing our proposal.